Why Are Rape Victims More—Not Less—Likely To Become Pregnant?

Representative Todd Akin of Missouri made two mistakes when he said recently about pregnancy resulting from rape....“From what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

His first mistake was linguistic. The term “legitimate rape” is an oxymoron. “Legitimate rape” does not exist. End of story.

His second mistake was believing the “doctors” who gave him the idea that the female body can “shut the whole thing down.” (According to the L. A. Times, the “doctors” was one Jack C. Wilke, a prominent anti-abortionist physician and past president of the National Right To Life Committee.)

But is there evidence to support this claim? After all, in some species, females do have the ability to rid their body of unwanted semen. Chickens, for example. Researchers at the University of Sheffield studied this phenomenon in flocks of free ranging chickens (here). The scientists found most sexual interactions between roosters and hens are coerced. (I was not surprised; I used to raise chickens.) I was surprised, however, to learn that hens had the ability to eject sperm from their reproductive tracts. Further, hens are choosy about it. The researchers found that hens were much more likely to eject the semen of low ranking “forced copulators” than the rapists at the top of the social hierarchy who presumably have better genes. In spiders, this is called “sperm dumping.”

So a biological anti-pregnancy mechanism exists in chickens and spiders that kicks in during forced copulations. Is there any evidence that a similar mechanism exists in human females? Are Representative Akin and Dr. Wilke right?

No. In fact, there is evidence that human females are more likely to get pregnant when raped than when they have consensual sex!

Rape Often Leads to Conception: The Evidence

The evidence that women are more likely to get pregnant by rape is described in this article in the journal Human Nature by Jonathan and Tiffani Gottschall. Between November,1995 and May, 1996, the National Institute of Justice, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Centers for Disease Control jointly conducted a telephone survey of 8,000 randomly selected American women. Some of the questions dealt with rape and subsequent pregnancy. Four hundred and five of the women indicated they had been raped exactly one time. The Gottschall’s used this data to compare the chances of getting pregnant via a rape versus consensual sex.

The Results

Twenty-six of the women who had been raped became pregnant—a pregnancy rate of 6.42%, which increased to 8% when adjusted for contraceptive use.

If you think that this is a low pregnancy rate, you are wrong. Contrary to what most people think, humans are among the most infertile of species. The most widely cited research article on this topic was a study of the relationship between pregnancy and the timing of intercourse among women who were trying to conceive and were not using any birth control. Naturally, the researchers found that the odds of their getting pregnant changed with the stage of their menstrual cycles. Among the “regular cyclers,” a woman’s chances of conceiving ranged from a high of 9% if they had sex on day 13 of their cycle to 0% when they were having their period. Over the entire cycle, however, a woman’s chances getting pregnant from one act of intercourse was only 3.1%. This finding is consistent with other studies of human fertility.

In short, women are at least twice as likely to conceive as a result of rape than by consensual sex.

Why Should Pregnancy Be More Common During Rape?

Why does rape result in increased risk of pregnancy? This remains an open question. The Gottschalls reject some possibilities. These include the idea that rape induces ovulation, (copulation does stimulate the release of an egg in some species), that rapists have more virile sperm, and that rapists have a special capacity to detect women who are ovulating. They do make a couple of conjectures they consider reasonable. The first is that rapists target women who are particularly fertile based on factors such as beauty and age. The second is that women unconsciously “broadcast cues about their ovulatory status that men are capable of registering and interpreting.” These hypothetical unconscious cues could be physiological (e.g. body odor, subtle changes in skin tone) or behavioral. To their credit, however, the authors admit that there is little evidence or no evidence to support their conjectures.

So, sorry Rep. Akin…there is no evidence that human females have a biological mechanism that prevents pregnancy during rape. If anything, it appears that women who are sexually assaulted are MORE rather than less likely to conceive.

Psyche,
I usually like simple explanations. Yours would be a good one except for the fact that the women in the consensual sex study did not use any birth control. Indeed, it was a prospective study and they were trying to get pregnant.

With a matter as contentious as this I think its necessary to hold the data to very high standards. A phone survey with four hundred relevant cases, of which only 26 were pregnant, firstly seems a very small sample for making such bold claims. A 1% difference is 4 respondents. It also relies on self-reporting over a highly impersonal medium which brings a whole series of additional questions (rape is an incredibly traumatic thing to discuss with a stranger over the phone). Challenging the nonsense spewed by Akins can't be a bad thing, but arguing the opposite based on one study seems an unnecessarily provocative strategy, at least without attaching more caveats first.

Harry - I agree about high standards. In most of the biomedical and behavioral sciences, we never know if a finding is actually "true" because our data is based on samples. In this case, both studies seem to have been well done. (I read them carefully). However, as you point out, it is always possible that the differences between the groups could be due to random chance.

Statistics help us figure out how likely this is. Prodded by your comment, I used the Fisher Exact Test to roughly estimate the odds the difference in conception rates could be due to chance. Using the contraception-corrected pregnancy estimates, I calculated the odds at 2 out of 100 that the results were due to chance. This means that we can be 98% sure that the difference between the groups in pregnancy rates were not due to random chance. The normal acceptability in science is 95% certainty (p

Depending on the study, I've seen from 20-90% of women raped experience orgasm - even those women that have trouble achieving orgasm with their loving partners. Orgasm increases the chance of pregnancy.

BOSTON - A new study to be published in next month's Journal of Clinical Psychiatry is causing controversy in the psychiatric community for some of its unexpected findings. The study, titled "Shame and Guilt in the Aftermath of Sexual Attack", verifies much of what we know about the mental health of rape victims. However, one observation in particular is raising eyebrows. After analyzing the anonymous transcripts of over 5,000 post-rape counseling sessions, the authors point out that almost all female rape victims experience orgasm during the attack.

Asked for comment, Dr. Herschel Liebowitz, one of the authors of the study, said, "Millions of years of evolution has hard-wired women to be attracted to strong, dominant, and aggressive men. Unfortunately, rapists exhibit an extreme form of these characteristics, even if only temporarily, and this causes an unexpected and involuntary physiological response in the victim."

Mike,
I am surprised at the claim that "almost all female rape victims experience orgasm." Most studies have found that the average American woman has orgasms 60% of time they have sex - though there are lots of individual differences. I do not see why orgasm should me MORE frequently during rape. Thus I conducted a search of the academic literature to find the article in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry you mentioned. I could not find any citation to the article or to Dr. Herschel Liebowitz discussing rape. If you have information on where I can locate the article, please send it to me.
Thanks for your comment.
Hal

Women don't like being raped and they certainly don't have involuntary responses to it. If anything women don't easily achieve orgasms even when they want intercourse. What in your right mind makes you think they would be able to have an orgasm when they don't want intercourse. They're bodies don't work that way dude. Women are much more capable of switching off than men. Especially in a circumstance of force and violence. It just doesn't happen that way man. I think you just have some sort of freak fantasy where you'd like that to be a reality but it's not. No woman anywhere has ever had an orgasm during rape and you know it dude! If they have, then I think it's safe to assume it probably wasn't rape.

I'm downloading R now to try other tests, but doesn't the above contradict the fischer test?

Also, the pregnancy rate in both cases is w/o birth control. I've read that birth control usage rate is around 70%. And some rapists use condoms to avoid leaving data.

I appreciate your focus on the data and answering the questions. Obviously, I'm interested in this part of the debate. But I think both sides are trying to use math to obscure what is essentially a moral/ethical discussion. It only 1 woman got pregnant from rape, we still need to answer "what is the right thing to do?"

Eric,
The margin of error in polls does not directly apply to comparison between groups in experiments. The margin of error in polls says that there is a 95% chance that the true mean of the population is within the margin of errors.

Differences between control and experimental groups are based on inferential statistics like t-tests, ANOVA, Chi square and the Fisher Exact test. Like the margin of error stat, they take into consideration the sample size, degree of variation, and the size of the difference.

In this case, the comparisons between data from two different studies makes thing complicated. However, I went ahead and used the Fisher Exact test to get a rough approximation of the odds the differences in the pregnancy rates of the groups (rape v trying to get pregnant) were due to sampling error. In this case (using the pregnancy rates in the raped group adjusted for birth control) the odds of getting a difference that large ((3.1% versus 8%) are 2 in 100. This is considerably smaller than the normal probability of getting a (type I) error in most areas of science which is 5/100 (p

found a few sites that have the article mentioned above, but when I try to go the source, the MSNBC link, it says the page is no longer available

this is typical - typical!

when some fact, figures or any evidence is published that disagrees with the pro-feminist-pro-gay-pro-whatever the left/progressives are pro these days, it often magically dissapears from the internet

I have seen this happen dozens of times in the last ten years or so

I find it hilarious that we call this the information age because information is so controlled and manipulated by the leftist establishment - you leftist are now the establishment and NOT the rebels anymore - that what is left can not be called information.

Even here at psychology today information is very often used to do something else than inform, never mind expand minds

it is mostly used to bash/demonize the political right

that is the opposite of expanding one's mind

and often the authors here feel the need to name names as if it was not obvious enough their goal is not so much to share knowledge but to tell us what to think about the political right

I have no University degrees and my mother tongue is not even English it is French, and I am not even an American, I am a Canadian

and I am not a religious person at all, I must have been 4 years old when I realized that religious beliefs are more like superstitions than anything else, and I began to seriously doubt there could be such a thing as a God

so no, sorry to dissapoint you but I am not a bible thumping gun totting one toothed right winger

but even to me - little unimportant me - what is happening here is as obvious as the fact water is wet

Using science to brainwash people into believing they should hate everything on the political right?

I don't get it, CW. The claim that almost all women who are raped experience orgasm seems *highly* unlikely. However, let's pretend for a moment that it were true. How would this support the conservative agenda over the liberal agenda?

This would not change the basic fact: Women can and do become just as pregnant from rape as from consensual sex.

Yeah, I don't think I get your point either. Are you saying that in the unlikely event that women actually do experience orgasm more often when they are raped, then this supports the worldview of the political right? You sound a bit like a conspiracy theorists in that you automatically assume a cover-up is taking place. If there are going to be any assumptions, it would make more sense to assume that the comment about the content or existence of this article might be b.s.

I was going to give you advice on other ways to verify the existence of this article rather than some MSNBC link. But as you sound a bit erratic, it's probably best that I don't spur you on.

Cw, perhaps the problem isn't a political bias so much as that you are attempting to find a scientific study via a news organization. MSNBC is a business, and while I do rather like MSNBC personally, they aren't particularly shy about being left-leaning. If they reported on an actual study, there will be evidence somewhere of this study. Scientists who do that kind of research tend to like their work to be published, and not merely by news organizations. It should be available somewhere unless perhaps it was reported on inaccurately by MSNBC in the first place.

Furthermore, Cw, I found this in a search for the article you were trying to find (I also found nothing):

"Allegedly, the article was to be published in the September 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, but the article did not appear in that journal. Scientific journals do not cave in to pressure from "rape feminists", or anyone else, once they have accepted and slated papers for publication. And, apparently the news about publication of this study allegedly appeared on only the MSNBC Web site (if it ever appeared even there). Certainly, news of publication of such a study would have hit more media outlets than just MSNBC--this would have been rather big news, given the alleged startling findings.

What is even more interesting, there appears to be no Dr. Herschel Liebowitz (who was identified as a co-author of the alleged study) who is either a psychiatrist, or any other professional who would have contact with sexual assault victims, or who has done any research at all in that area. There is a psychologist with a similar name, but his area was visual perception and he retired professionally about 15 years ago.

I suspect that the report of this alleged study, which appears on no reputable Web sites, was a hoax.

There is nothing to substantiate the fact that the study ever existed.

As a rape victim and a scientist; I interpreted Aiken's comments as such:

"Legitimate" I appreciated the distinction

Let me tell you, when someone is forcing their dick inside you, your vaginal walls expel it; and the stress you undergo, if it is really rape, will usually prevent zygote from implanting.

It is quite frustrating to me that rape has come to be used so generally and lacksadaisacally (spelling?)that the victims of REAL LEGITIMATE RAPE are so diminutized to be put in a group along with some drunk bitch that claims rape because she doesn't remember.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No one is denying that some women lie about claims of rape, but the term "legitimate rape" is unnecessarily redundant. If the woman lied, then what she experienced cannot be called rape. Why didn't he just say "in the case of rape", then?

Anonymous, I'm really sorry that you were raped. However, your reasoning is incorrect.

You note that you were raped, and did not become pregnant. This does NOT mean that stress prevented the zygote from implanting.

In fact, during a given menstrual cycle, there are only 3-5 days on which intercourse can result in pregnancy. If a woman is raped (or has unprotected consensual sex) on one of the other 23 or so days of her cycle, pregnancy will not result.

There is absolutely not one shred of evidence that stress prevents zygotes from implanting.

Most TESTS indicate a 5% chance of pregnancy from rape. You left all that out.

The CHANCES that 26 pregnant people from ONE TEST represent 330 million americans with any statistical accuracy is NOT 95%. Not geographically, not genetically, not circumstantially, not ethnically...

The fact that you "rolled the dice" and adjusted your figures a COUPLE PERCENT UPWARDS because it "seemed a reasonable compensation for your assumptions about contraceptives" gives us a good insioght into your methodology, and your "unconscious" agenda.

THIS is precisely why we do MANY TESTS. Not to invalidate your favorite example, not to invalidate your reasoning - but to TEST IT!!!

Dear GrampaSez...I completely agree about the importance of basing science on many tests rather than a single study.

Indeed, I did a lit review search for data on the chances of pregnancy during rape. I did not find much and the best one was from the paper I cited which has the huge advantage of being based on a random survey of American women. This avoids the obvious biases of only using women who report the rapes.

Please send me the references to support your statment that "Most TESTS indicate a 5% chance of pregnancy from rape." (Whis is still higher than the 3.1% in the women trying to get pregnant that the UNC group found.) I want to look your references up. If I agree that the data is as good as you say, I will post and andendum to the blog.

Thanks for sending the references. I look forward to seeing them. (One proviso -- they need to be from peer-reviewed journals.)

Hal, You have quite the Gordian knot. To suggest that men know women are ovulating would imply that ALL men know. If all men know (which seems to be true at a subconscious level), then the pregnancy rate should not be different for rapists.

Something interesting is happening to ovulating women. It causes them to resist sex somewhat (causing the lower rates) except when raped. Why would an ovulating women resist sex during the part of her cycle when she is most likely to be pregnant? I had the impression that ovulation is the time when women are most interested in sex but I, like most men I assume, don't track ovulation carefully enough to know.

This calls for more detailed study of ovulating women.

I am willing to be an infield tester. (Just kidding.)

It would be fascinating to experience a wide range of women ovulating as part of a study.

You're right. And the problem you point out was alluded to in the Gottschall paper.

There is a considerable body of evidence now that men (not just rapist) unconsciously treat ovulating women differently. There is also evidence from Gordon Gallup's lab that women do (probably unconsciously) avoid certain risky situations when they are fertile.

Note that I did not provide an explaination for the difference in pregnancy rates. I simply reported the results of the the two studies. I had to say it, but this is one of those cases where "more research is needed." (I was suprised at the lack of good information on pregnancy rates as a result of rape.)

Rape-related pregnancy: estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women.

RESULTS:
The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year

===============

"Right now news sources are quick to repeat the familiar mantra that a pregnancy occurs in 5% of rape cases. It is a 16-year-old statistic lifted from a study of 4,008 women.[2] A 1982 study of 692 women suggested the chance of pregnancy occurring from a rape to be between 2% and 4%.[3] While statistically 2% to 5% is not a large percentage, for the victim the prospect no matter how remote emotionally compounds an already traumatic event." - Robert Fleischmann

"Scott Berkowitz, founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said he relied on the National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual review conducted by the Justice Department, which he said offered “the best data” available."

"But Dean G. Kilpatrick, a professor and doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina and author of the 1996 study that assumes a much higher number of rapes, said government figures vastly understated the incidences of rape, and therefore, rape-related pregnancies."

"There are two main sources of government data about rape: the FBI and the Justice Department."

"The Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey is a bit more complete, Kilpatrick said. The survey goes beyond crime data and interviews people by telephone or face to face. But there is so little confidence in the survey’s methodology that the government has convened a Committee on National Statistics panel to compare different approaches and “develop an optimal design” for a survey to gather rape and sexual assault data."

“They wouldn’t be doing the study if they were satisfied with the way they are measuring things right now,” Kilpatrick said.

GrampaSez....I have written piles of empirical research papers that have gone through the peer review process. One of the best things about blogging and writing opinion pieces such as newspaper op eds is that they DON'T go through the peer review process. They are just that -- my opinion -- which I usually try to back up with research. The closest thing to peer review are the comments from readers. So, thanks for your feedback.

Gil -- thanks for pointing this article out. I am not surprised by the results. One of the theories that the Gottschalls give credence to in their article is that men generally (not just rapists) are attracted to ovulating women. This is different than the idea that rapists have a special ability to detect ovulation. Their idea is that rapists have higher rates of impregnation because they (like other men) find ovulating women particularly sexy. (Keep in mind, however, that this particular study had a fairly small sample size.)

I would also say that rapists have higher rates of impregnation because unlike the other men around the women ovulating, they don't take no for an answer and use violence to make sure that they can act on their attraction.
What pleasant folks!

I believe rape is more about expressing power than sexuality and reproduction but these issues are never about one thing. This article about the earnings cycle of lap dancers may contribute something to the discussion about whether rapists are aware of fertility. This is probably not the best example as it is based on women whose behaviour because of the profit motive is different. I would suggest that when selecting a victim perceived vulnerability would also be a factor.

I would just like to comment to Anonymous, I am sorry that you had such a terrible experience but I don't think that gives you the right to devalue the experience of others. Too drunk to remember is also too drunk to give informed consent. I hate drunkeness and drunken behaviour but there are many reasons for it that I don't hate eg, inexperience of a young person, self medication for mental illness.

I agree that people should be responsible for themselves and not drink to excess but it's not always that simple. Even responsible people like myself who hate drunkeness can slip and over indulge when out and relaxing with friends. One drink too many clouds your judgement about having the next drink or two and hopefully the worst thing that happens is feeling ill the next day but it can go terribly wrong. That's not even touching on the issue of drink spiking. It doesn't give others permission to take advantage.

My next comment is made about a widely held belief and I don't wish to target Anonymous in particular with it so I apologise in advance to Anonymous if it is taken personally.

The term "legitimate rape" supports the view that it is only rape if the victim struggles violently against it. It does not allow for a situation where a person is frozen with fear or makes a judgement that it physically safer to submit than to struggle. In these cases submission is not the same as permission. This helplessness can be exacerbated if a person has been brought up, as many women have, to be submissive and obedient.

There is an expectation that women will fight against unwanted intercourse but the skills needed to do that are usually not taught to girls and are actively discouraged. Even in our more feminist society, girls are expected play nice. In the process assertiveness and physical aggression are often not well developed. Then we blame the girl when she doesn't use these skills when she needs them.

Deb -- great comment. I agree. By the way, I am very familiar with Miller's lap dancing study. I discuss it every semester in my human sexuality classes. The researchers found that lap dancers made roughly 40% more when they were ovulating.

His entire statement was completely ignorant. Certainly there is no such act as a legitimate rape. The idea the female body can shut down somehow in that situation is ridiculous. Clearly he needs to consult with legitimate doctors before he even considers opening his mouth to spew such offensive and inaccurate statements.

A word about Akin. If there are false claims of rape, then there are also legitimate claims of rape. A rape vicitim isn't a rape victim. She is an accuser, until she has established in a court of law the guilt of the person she has accused.

The process that emergency personell in rape trauma centers go through will scrape the sexual organs of the female.

The real question about pregnancy which may result is whether or not a developing fetus is a human. Life is in fact, a continuum from conception to death. It is convenient to kill babies (and the elderly too) but it is still murder by definition.

There are probably a thousand different reasons why a woman may orgasm from an encounter which one might regard as forced. Unless there is a chaperone there to give account, or injury to report from the incident, however, there is no way to judge whether or not permission had been granted.

The systematic removal of the legal requirement of witness, injury or weapon to prove a rape by left wing organizations in this country is what made the dismissal of allegations against President Clinton so infuriating.

If one visits the false rape society, they will see a pantheon of accusers who have been proven to be liars. Some, like Crystal Magnum, a single female, were prepared to put a half-dozen men in prison. There is no sympathy for the wrongly accused whose lives have been ruined, nor are there very serious penalties for the accusers. This is highly political. These were ILLEGITIMATE.

Lastly, the word rape has a meaning which goes beyond, unwanted penetration. It is a horrific violation of intimacy and it can be brutal. Julian Assange may have refused to wear a condom. And a loving husband may without his wife's permission penetrate her as she sleeps. In a legal sense none of the above would be (should be) defined as rape even though the penetration was not permitted. That's because the implication of a complete violation of intimacy - Of taking something which is not yours - the implication that the male involved is a dangerous sexual predator wrongly applied!

Under these conditions, the offended party would (should) seek a separate legal remedy. The law provides plenty of other definitions like assault and battery.

I believe the PC and CPUSA along with the DNC and the entire left wing know they are twisting Akin's words.

"if you can bear to hear the truths you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..." Kipling

I agree with your statement that a rapist is innocent until proven guilty. It is a foundation of democracy that I hold very dear and it disturbs me greatly when it is not respected, for example in the cases of Bradley Manning and David Hicks.

It does not follow, however, that a victim of rape has not been raped until the rapist is found guilty in a court of law.

If your wallet was stolen by a pickpocket and the thief ran off, never to be seen again, you have still been the victim of a theft.

If the person you believe stole your wallet is caught and tried and then is found not guilty of theft, you are still the victim of theft but you have to accept that the person you accused was not guilty. Perhaps you got it wrong, perhaps you wanted to make trouble for an innocent person, perhaps the person is guilty but there's just not enough proof. Perhaps you were so angry you just wanted to see someone get the blame, even the wrong person.

At the very least you have to accept that there was insufficient evidence to convict the accused person and because, as you quite rightly point out, of the devastating effects of a guilty verdict on the life of a possibly innocent person that person was given the benefit of the doubt and found not guilty.

Unless you've lied about having your wallet stolen, you are still the victim of theft.

No one here has suggested that every woman who accuses a man of rape is making an honest accusation. That's exactly why we have courts, to sort the lies from the truth although that is inconvenient to an unjustly/incorrectly accused person it is not as inconvenient as having unfounded rumours circulating about your reputation without you having your "day in court" to force your accuser to prove the truth of their accusations.

I would be interested in seeing a link to some statistics to support CW's statement that "A lot of women lie about having been raped that is the bottom line".

I would suggest that many women who have been raped never accuse their rapist. This doesn't make them less raped. It just means they have been discouraged from becoming accusers for one of several reasons. Here are some US statistics (many collected from people have been injured in the course of their rape and collated by the US Dept of Justice) to back my claim.

A word about Akin. If there are false claims of rape, then there are also legitimate claims of rape. A rape vicitim isn't a rape victim. She is an accuser, until she has established in a court of law the guilt of the person she has accused.

The process that emergency personell in rape trauma centers go through will scrape the sexual organs of the female.

The real question about pregnancy which may result is whether or not a developing fetus is a human. Life is in fact, a continuum from conception to death. It is convenient to kill babies (and the elderly too) but it is still murder by definition.

There are probably a thousand different reasons why a woman may orgasm from an encounter which one might regard as forced. Unless there is a chaperone there to give account, or injury to report from the incident, however, there is no way to judge whether or not permission had been granted.

The systematic removal of the legal requirement of witness, injury or weapon to prove a rape by left wing organizations in this country is what made the dismissal of allegations against President Clinton so infuriating.

If one visits the false rape society, they will see a pantheon of accusers who have been proven to be liars. Some, like Crystal Magnum, a single female, were prepared to put a half-dozen men in prison. There is no sympathy for the wrongly accused whose lives have been ruined, nor are there very serious penalties for the accusers. This is highly political. These were ILLEGITIMATE.

Lastly, the word rape has a meaning which goes beyond, unwanted penetration. It is a horrific violation of intimacy and it can be brutal. Julian Assange may have refused to wear a condom. And a loving husband may without his wife's permission penetrate her as she sleeps. In a legal sense none of the above would be (should be) defined as rape even though the penetration was not permitted. That's because the implication of a complete violation of intimacy - Of taking something which is not yours - the implication that the male involved is a dangerous sexual predator wrongly applied!

Under these conditions, the offended party would (should) seek a separate legal remedy. The law provides plenty of other definitions like assault and battery.

I believe the PC and CPUSA along with the DNC and the entire left wing know they are twisting Akin's words.

"if you can bear to hear the truths you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..." Kipling

It is exactly because there are many cases where the accusations of rape are false that the politically correct crowd has turned this into Akins saying there cases where rape is ok or legitimate.

The PC crowd does not want the secret to be out that many MANY women lie about having been raped. It would not help the left and the feminists to reveal a truth like that.

It is convenient for people with an agenda to distract us from the truth with a made up story about Akins.

The people who start such made up stories to distract us - to create a diversion from the truth about women and feminists know fully well that Akins never meant that some rapes are ok.

the rest of the people who believe such stories and repeat them are simply usefull idiots ; they don't know enough and are not bright enough to care to dig deeper.

Here is another example ; when a bunch of insane radical muslims killed americans in an embassy a few days ago, the PC crowd - the main stream media and the political left - were more interested in making up a divertion from the real facts by making the issue about what Romney might have said that is inappropriate.

Americans murdered? that is a side note

A republican may have phrased something not perfectly? Now THAT is HUGE story!!!

Just like bashing Akins by distorting what he said , bashing Romney is a distraction from the fact Obama could have done more to reduce tensions in the middle east but did not.

Those who start those " rumors" are malicious and those who gobble them are idiots, usefull ones, but still idiots.

He fully intended to state that women lie about rape and that no woman who was raped could get pregnant.

The man is a doctor that doesn't accept embryology.

FYI the majority of fertilized eggs are rejected by the mothers body. 90% of fertilized eggs are terminated within the first three weeks.

Making abortion illegal doesn't reduce the numbers it in fact increases them.

Rapists likely do have genes that get passed on and make their offspring more likely to commit rape. Why shouldn't certain criminal behaviors in fact not be the product of environment but nature? Until gene therapy limiting the breeding of criminals and aborting the spawn in the womb would likely fix the problem of criminal behavior in a few generations and then the majority of crimes in the future will never occur because the people with the genes that turn them into criminals will not be here.

We are fortunate enough to live in an age when a woman do not have to worry about bearing the child of a man who brutalized her. There are some in America who would force woman to bear that child, in the name of some warped God-directed concept of respect for life
I ask you this: What God deserves worship who would “bless” a violent, soul-destroying act with an unwanted living reminder? What nation would allow a religion to write law that dehumanizes a woman into nothing but a vessel, as rapist see women?